Carlie at 15 months

 

Carlie just turned 15 months last week and she is now in full-on toddler mode!  She loves to walk, run, crawl, climb, and generally just get into anything and everything that she can!  Carlie is a very happy girl (unless she doesn't get her way - yikes!) who still loves to eat and sleep like a champ!   She usually goes to bed around 8pm & at times doesn't get up until 10 the next morning!  She'll take a shorter nap in the afternoon if she has slept in that morning, but when she gets up early (or is forced to get up early!), she'll often sleep for 2 or more hours for her nap!

 

Right now, Carlie's been up to:

• Talking up a storm about anything and everything (in her own language)
• Mimicking animal sounds & Haddy singing songs (she loves to sing 'dee-dee-dee-dee' when Haddy sings the ABCs)
• Cleaning and organizing - she loves putting shoes away, especially
• Books - Carlie loves to pick out a book and plop herself down on your lap, but she'll usually just turn the book back to her favorite page over and over before you realize that there's no use in trying to finish the book!
• Attempting to eat her food with a fork (and sometimes a spoon) - she knows what to do and gets lucky about half the time!
• Climbing stairs & playground equipment - she loves the big-girl swings, too
• Putting EVERYTHING into her mouth!
• Eating anything and everything, especially broccoli & mango!
• the Old MacDonald Poke-A-Dot book

 

So far this summer, Carlie's gone camping (her first camping trip to Parker Dam), to the Cape May Zoo, to the beach house (where she went on her first surrey ride), to a farm, to a family picnic & to the Frenchville Picnic (where she went on her first hay ride!).  She also met some of Mommy's friends from high school (and their kids) at a playground!

 

Carlie now weighs about 22 pounds, 13 ounces (50th percentile) is about 29.5" tall (25th percentile) & her head is about 18.5 inches (70th percentile).  She has 12 teeth (all 8 in the front & her first four molars all around!).  She is wearing mostly 18 month clothing now, but still fits into some 12 month items now, depending on what they are.  Carlie wears size 3 diapers & is easing her way into size 3 shoes.  She still uses her paci when she sleeps & plays with her hair while she's falling asleep.  She does a great job of finding things to do & will play independently very well.

Carlie's first trip to the Penn State Creamery

Words & phrases Carlie says now:

• Mama
• Dada
• Hadda
• All Done
• Ta-Da!
• Uh-oh!
• Animal noises: cat, dog, bird, duck, snake, elephant, pig, cow

She also signs:

• More
• Please
• Milk
• Thank You/You're Welcome
• All Done

Hadley at 2.75

 

It almost seems impossible that my next entry for Hadley will be for her THIRD birthday!  She continues to amaze us each day with the things that she knows and understands!  It's really remarkable to watch her learn, overcome obstacles, & play the big sister role.  We still struggle with getting her to play independently, but she has grown leaps and bounds in this area just in the past few weeks, so we're hopeful that she will continue improving in this area more and more!

Here's what Haddy's up to these days:

• She graduated from the high chair to a booster seat at the table
• We enrolled her in dance class for the fall (mostly because there were no 2-yr-old preschool programs in the area)
• Haddy can sing the ABCs (she finally added in the L yesterday!) and count to 13 (she counts on after this, but as is the case with many kids, gets a bit mixed up on the tricky teens!)
• She loves the VeggieTales characters and will sing the songs over and over again (particularly "Oh Where is my Hairbrush?", "The BellyButton Song", and the theme song.
• She loves playing with her cousins (she got to see ALL of them for the family beach pictures)
• Haddy would love to give up naps, but still needs them & generally doesn't put up much fuss about going down for them.  We will skip them from time to time if we have lots going on, though
• She knows all of her upper and lower-case letters & almost all of their sounds
• Haddy loves the computer & is learning to use the mouse & keyboard a couple of times a week
• She still has no interest in the potty, but did tell us that she would "use the potty on Tuesday" Haha
• Hadley loves to swim and play in the water.  She will jump in by herself (wearing her Puddle Jumper) & doesn't need help to paddle herself around
• She really wants to learn to ride a bike, but it seems that she's still just a bit too short
• She still loves the color purple & now calls Daddy's favorite color orange (instead of orn-jin, as it was previously known) 
• Haddy has taken an interest in coloring and drawing
• She knows how to write an H and a T - we're working on her "a" next, so she can start learning to write her name 

So far this summer, Haddy's gone camping (her first camping trip to Parker Dam & her first fishing experience where she mostly wanted to just pick blueberries off the bank), to the Cape May Zoo, to the beach house (where she went mini-golfing & on a boat for the first times, & also went on a surrey ride), to a farm, to a family picnic & to the Frenchville Picnic.  She also met some of Mommy's friends from high school (and their kids) at a playground & she went to see her first movie on a date with Daddy!

 

 

 

Hadley is now over 3 feet tall & weighs about 28 pounds.  She wears mostly 2T-3T clothing, however she still does have a few 24m skirts & shirts thrown into the mix.  She is still in size 4 diapers, however I hope we can proudly tell you that she's in "big girl underpants" by the next update!  Haddy is a great breakfast and lunch eater (she loves any kind of "salad" sandwich - egg salad, tuna salad, etc.), but definitely continues to fight us at dinner time, especially over her vegetables.

 

Haddy's first trip to the Penn State Creamery

Haddy's fish (Nemo) that she won at the Frenchville Picnic & keeps at MumMum & Pops' house (please don't tell her that Pops had to buy a replacement Nemo already!)

Haddy's first boating experience

Hadley is 2 and a half!

Earlier this week, our big 2-year-old celebrated her half birthday! Hadley continues to amaze us as we watch her grow, learn, and change on a daily basis! It is such a joy to watch her little mind make sense of the world and piece together what everything around her means! She is really beginning to do more pretend play and use her imagination. Hadley also has (slowly) started to appreciate messy sensory play activities that she was once afraid of (Carlie has never seemed to have this same fear), such as finger painting or shaving cream. Hadley is definitely becoming a little word-nerd like her Mama, too! She knows all of her capital letters and is starting to learn the lower-case letters now (thank you, Super Why!). She can even proudly tell you the sounds of half of the letters in the alphabet.

Hadley now weighs about 27 pounds and is *almost* three feet tall. She is hovering between 2T and 3T clothes, she wears a size 6-7 shoe (depending on the brand) and she's still in a size 4 diaper (with no apparent interest in ditching the diapers anytime soon! Boo!).

Right now, Hadley's favorite things are:

• Doc McStuffins
• Super Why
• Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood
• anything purple
• singing
• playing on the playground
• giving check-ups (usually to Carlie, who may or may not be a willing patient)
• writing her letter H on everything ("down, down, across!" Look! I made a H!")
• peanut butter and jelly or tuna fish sandwiches
• piggyback rides
• stickers
• the alphabet
• ice pops (which she calls lollipops)
• playing with Carlie (though at times, she acts like she could take her or leave her, but we know she'd be lost with out her!)
• playing at the water & sand tables

Haddy-isms:

• Orn-gin (Daddy's favorite color)
• I'm Dr. Scholl & these are my friends, I'm going to give you a checkup (as she puts on her doctor's coat and stethoscope)
• Do you want to watch Carlie pick her nose? And I pick my nose, too! (to Miss Erin and the other moms at library story time)
• Good Morning, Carlie! What a good nappy-doo, Honey Bunchy! (When we go in when Carlie wakes up from her nap)
• Carlie, do you want to play 'boochy-boochy'? (as she squeezes Carlie's cheeks)

Carlie-Bug is One!

I can't believe it's true, but our Carlie-Bug is really a year old now! Where has the time gone? Carlie celebrated her first birthday with a donut, which she very messily enjoyed, and a letter C shirt from Hadley (she picked the color, orange!). Mama and Daddy also got her a ladybug poem decal & a ladybug growth chart, both for her room. She celebrated with a birthday party at Grammy & Granddad's house over the weekend and she will have another party at MumMum & Pops' house this coming weekend! I think there's a good chance that she'll be all partied out by the time this is all said and done!







At her well-baby visit with the doctor today, Carlie weighed 19lb, 10oz (a full pound and a half heavier than Hadley at the same age!), 27.5" tall, & 18" head circumference (25th, 10th, & ~75th percentiles, respectively)! Carlie wasn't too happy about the 3 shots that she received, but overall, she is very healthy and the doctor has no concerns at this time! Carlie is wearing 12 month size clothing, almost exclusively now, but she's growing so quickly that it's hard to say how long that size will fit her! She is still wearing size 3 diapers and size 2 shoes (tiny little feet! At the same age, Haddy was wearing size 4 or 4.5, I believe!). Carlie still doesn't say much in the way of understandable words (other than Dada and "DAT/that!"), but she is a great communicator and has started using signs and head nods more frequently! She signs more, please, and thank you, and will now nod her head yes and no! It's really very cute and it's neat to see how much she actually understands of what you say to her!



Carlie's favorite things to do this month are to play at the playground (swinging on the swings and eating mulch!), play at the sand table or the water table (also eating sand!), and to try and chase Hadley. I have to admit, she does a pretty good job of keeping up with her!





The big news for Carlie this month is that she started walking! About 2 weeks before her birthday, she took what we would consider her first steps. She did the "Frankenstein Walk" for a couple of weeks, but on her actual birthday, Carlie just decided to go-go-go and she hasn't stopped since! I've affectionately nicknamed her ATB (short for all-terrain baby!) due to her skills in going from carpet, to hardwood or tile, back to carpet again without falling...or on mulch, sidewalks, and grass while wearing her shoes! I think that's pretty good for a beginning walker!



In other big news this month, Carlie is now completely weaned from nursing! I felt as though she wasn't really getting anything anyway, so we decided to slowly cut back about 2 weeks before her birthday. We transitioned to whole milk (which she took to really well, in my opinion), and aside from a couple of crabby, clingy days, she did awesome! It probably helps that Carlie LOVES to eat (everything!), so distracting her with other yummy foods helped to take her mind off of "milkies." These days, Carlie loves veggies (cucumbers, asparagus, bell peppers, green beans) and fruits (mango, banana, strawberries), but quite honestly, there isn't a food that we've given her that she hasn't eaten! She is definitely her mother's daughter (though she loves her sweets, so she's certainly her father's daughter, too!)!



Carlie has also popped two new teeth this month to bring her running total up to 9! She got the last tooth on the bottom to give her the full set of eight in the front, and she's just started cutting a molar in the back, as well! She's been doing OK with the teething, but we've been having to get up with her quite a bit at night, so we're hoping that the tooth cuts through quickly so we can all get back to our normal nighttime sleep schedule!



Here are some pics from the first of Carlie's parties - more to be added later!















Party Number Two....

Carlie tried to share her messy smash cake with Hadley!

Carlie, Haddy, & Mama riding on Tim's barrel train at Carlie's party!

If you would like to view Carlie's birthday video, check it out here!  Password: carliebug